Various

“ Mark Holdsworth, a bachelor of middle age, is bored with commercial success and seeks a diversion. He would like to have a son. And his attractive typist, Sheila, strikes his fancy as a suitable medium. On her side the girl (obviously recognisable by her innocence as a pre-war flapper) is sick of drudgery, longs very simply for the joys of life, as she imagines them, meaning freedom and pretty dresses and money to spend and piles of invitation cards, and so forth. ”

“ How much she owes to Miss Fay Compton's interpretation of Sheila she would be the first to make generous acknowledgment. It was an astonishingly sensitive performance. Miss Compton can be eloquent with a single word or none at all. By a turn of her eyes or lips she can make you free of her inarticulate thoughts. I must go again just to hear her say "Yes," and give that sigh of content at the end of the First Act.
Mr. Aubrey Smith as Mark Holdsworth had a much easier task, and did it with his habitual ease. Mr. William Farren—a very welcome return—was perfect as ever in a good grumpy part. ”

“ Of course I should never pretend to say of a woman in drama or fiction that she has not been drawn true to nature. To know one man is, in most essentials, to know all men; to know fifty women (though this may be a liberal education) does not advance you very far in knowledge of a sex that has never been standardized.
When we first meet Sheila her idea of happiness is to spend an evening (innocent of escort) at the picture-palace ”

“ To a man of his economical turn of mind it was naturally enraging. But the thing that put the climax on his exasperation was the bas-relief of his wife, 'ridiculously svelte' as he remarked, shedding tears over the ashes of a wretched Boche.
"The situation for him and for the family generally," concluded Madame Marcot, "is, as you will readily conceive, one of extreme unpleasantness and delicacy. The cost of exhuming the Hun, after the really outrageous expense of his interment, is one that a thrifty man like M. de Blanchet must naturally shrink from ”

“ Summer has come, and on every slope graze herds of winter-worn gun-horses and transport mules. The new grass has gone to the heads of the latter and they make continuous exhibitions of themselves, gambolling about like ungainly lambkins and roaring with unholy laughter. ”

“ Runners arrive breathlessly from all directions bearing illegible chits, and tear off in the same directions with illegible answers or no answer at all. Motor-bicycles snort up to the door and arrogant despatch-riders enter with enormous envelopes containing leagues of correspondence, orders, minutes, circulars, maps, signals, lists, schedules, summaries and all sorts. ”

“ There is no question of a grand passion, not even a question of every-day romance. It is just a fair exchange, though she is too young to appreciate the man's motives and is content with the pride of being his choice and the prospects of the wonderful life that opens before her. ”

“ In the meantime he can never go to lay a wreath upon the tombs of his sainted father and mother, or pass through the cemetery on his way to mass (he is a good Catholic) , without being reminded of the miserable interloper and all the circumstances of his magnificent first-class funeral. Hence he is a man with a grievance—an undying grievance, I may say—for he is practically certain to have a ghost hereafter haunting the spot that ought to be its resting-place but isn't. Still, it is chic to have a ghost in the family. The de Blanchets will be more distinguished than ever. ”

“ Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
When I first read the title of Secret Bread (Heinemann) my idea was—well, what would anyone naturally think but that here was a romance of food-hoarding, a tale of running the potato blockade and the final discovery of a hidden cellar full of fresh rolls? But of course I was quite wrong. The name has nothing to do with food, other than mental; it stands for the sustaining idea (whatever it is) that each one of us keeps locked in his heart as the motive of his existence. ”

“ The Punch man, passing on to the office of The Times, craved permission to see the Editor, through smoked glass if necessary. Having complied with a thousand formalities he was at last ushered into the presence. The great man was engaged in selecting the various types in which to-morrow's letters were to be set up—big for the whales and minion for the minnows. "I can give you just two minutes," he said, without looking up. "These are strenuous ti——, I should say days. Self-advertisement we leave to the lower branches of the family." ”

“ Meanwhile it has seemed desirable for a Punch man to make a few inquiries among our leading philosophers and readers of the future with regard to the same engrossing topic. For England will ever be the wonder and despair of other nations in its capacity, no matter with what seriousness its hands are filled, for pursuing controversial distractions. ”

“ A signaller buzzes tenaciously at the telephone, talking in a strange language apparently to himself, as he never seems to be connected with anyone else. A stream of miscellaneous persons—quarter-masters, chaplains, generals, batmen, D.A.D.O.S.'s, sergeant-majors, staff-officers, buglers, Maires, officers just arriving, officers just going away, gas experts, bombing experts, interpreters, doctors—drifts in, wastes time, and drifts out again. ”

“ A bad shock comes when she hears, through a jealous woman-friend of his bachelor days, that he has married her for the sake of a son. This poisons for her the memory of their first union and she refuses to be his wife again. ”

“ But, since to the good Punch man difficulties exist only as obstacles of which the circumvention acts as intellectual cocktails or stimuli, the task was accomplished. Mr. Bennett agreed that the book of the other famous Essex fictionist was a meritorious and ingenious work, but he found it far from exhaustive. The idea of God, he held, still needed handling in a capable efficient way. What was wrong with religion was, he said, its mystery; if only it could be pruned of nonsense and made practical for the man in the street, it might become really useful. ”

“ We cannot all emulate the patience of Job, but we can at least set before us the noble example of Professor Cawker, who redeemed the angular exuberance of his youth by the mellow and mollifying kindliness of his maturity. Even if Mr. Gladstone did break chairs, we should not lightly condemn him. You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. Besides, chairs cannot retaliate.
Marcus Mull.
A Cynical Headline. "NEW BRITISH BLOW.—BIRTHDAY HONOURS LIST."—Daily Mirror.
We congratulate our contemporary on its terseness. The Times took nearly a column to say the same thing. ”

“ Happily a shell put an end to his activities; but by the grossest piece of ill-luck it made him completely unrecognisable, so that Madame de Blanchet, as well as the officers who identified him, were naturally led into the mistake of thinking him a good Frenchman, fallen in the exercise of his duty."
"What happiness to see him back!" I remarked.
"I believe you," said Madame Marcot, "and touching was the joy of M. de Blanchet too, until he observed her mourning. He was then inclined to be slightly hurt at her taking his death so readily for granted. However, she soon explained the case ”

“ War, he admits, serves very well as a light gentlemanly diversion for the idle months, but with the first yellow leaf he grows restless and hints indirectly that both ourselves and the horses would be much better employed in the really serious business of showing the little foxes some sport back in our own green isle. ”

“ Everything happens at the same time; nobody has time to finish a sentence. Only a military mind, with a very limited descriptive vocabulary and a chronic habit of self-deception, would call the place orderly. ”

“ I daresay you've 'eard as they're very short o' sweet-stuff in Germany."
"I 'ave," said the baker triumphantly, "I read it in my paper."
"Well," said Bill, "there was a wind settin' good and strong from us towards the submarine, an' when one of 'em as 'appened to be takin' the air at the time got a sniff of us 'e just couldn't leave off sniffin'. Then 'e passed the word down to the others, an' the hodour of the peppermints was that powerful it knocked 'em all of a 'eap, the same as food on an empty stummnick. See? That's the real reason o' the sugar shortage. ”

“ Although written by a Treasury official—a being who in popular conception is compounded of red-tape and sealing-wax and spends his life in spoiling the Ship of State by saving halfpennyworths of tar—it is not a dry-as-dust treatise on the art of scientific parsimony, but a lively plea for wise expenditure. Mr. Higgs is no believer in the dictum that the best thing to do with national resources is to leave them to fructify in the pockets of the taxpayers—"doubtful soil," in his opinion; nor is he afraid that heavy taxation will kill the goose with the golden eggs. ”

“ British Food Profiteer (to German ditto) . "ALAS! MY POOR BROTHER. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN ENGLISHMAN. ENGLAND IS A FREE COUNTRY."
[The Berlin Vossische Zeitung states that about four thousand cases of profiteering are dealt with monthly in Germany.]
THE FUNERAL OF M. DE BLANCHET.
"Never let your husband have a grievance," said Madame Marcot, stirring the lump of sugar that she had brought with her to put into her cup of tea. "It destroys the happiness of the most admirable households. Have you heard of the distressing case of the de Blanchets—Victor de Blanchet and his wife?" ”

“ It is fortunate that these gentlemen do not adorn any higher positions than those of private soldier and second-lieutenant, else, between them, they would stop the War altogether and we should all be out of jobs. ”

“ It is not yet compulsory under the new Order, but as a precaution it is advisable for the owner of a cheese to have his full name and address written on the collar.
The gentleman who advertised last week in a contemporary the loss of two pet dogs will be greatly interested in a little book just published, entitled How to Keep Dogs.
"It is the most extraordinary case I ever heard of," said the Chairman of the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal, in the case of a one-eyed man passed for general service. ”

“ Lice, beetles and, on one occasion, a live lizard have been found in the bags arriving from Cuba. Even with meat at its present price, Captain Bathurst doubts whether such additions to our dietary would be really welcome.
In the pre-historic times before August, 1914, the Postmaster-General was wont to give on the Vote for his department a long and discursive account of its multifarious activities, and to enliven the figures with anecdotes and even with jokes. Mr. Illingworth knows a better way. With deliberate monotony he reeled off his statistics to a steadily diminishing audience. ”

“ The pictures of Cornish farm-life also are admirably done—though I feel bound to repeat my conviction that the time is at hand when, for their own interest, our novelists will have to proclaim what one might call a close time for pilchards. ”

“ Beautiful words these, and typical of the man who gave utterance to them. The end came to him on October 8th, his twenty-eighth birthday. His battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment was engaged in making a series of bombing attacks. In one of these Arthur Heath was shot through the neck and fell. "He spoke once," Professor Murray tells us, "to say, 'Don't trouble about me,' and died almost immediately." His Platoon Sergeant wrote to his parents, "A braver man never existed," and with that epitaph we may leave him. ”

“ A Battersea fitter has been committed for trial for breaking into a Kingston jeweller's and stealing goods worth £2,350. There is really no excuse for this sort of thing, as the public have been repeatedly asked by the Government not to go in for expensive jewellery. ”

“ Well, the peppermints was in full blast an' the ship smellin' like a bloomin' sweet factory when the look-out reported a submarine on our port bow. O' course we was all cleared for haction, an' beginnin' to feel our Iron Crosses burnin' 'oles in our jumpers, when we begun to see as there was something funny about 'er. ”

“ It may be "one of those depraved birds which eat their own eggs, in which case, if its eggs cannot be trapped, killing is all it is fit for." The author is full of well-thought-out suggestions for saving waste and increasing efficiency in our national administration. The introduction of labour-saving machinery, the elimination of superfluous officials, the reduction of the necessary drudgery which too often blights the initiative and breaks the hearts of our young civil servants—all these and many other reforms are advocated in Mr. ”